Rights and wrongs: part 2
01/04/2008
Jon Lech Johansen, also known as ‘DVD Jon’, has released a new app called doubleTwist desktop, enabling DRM-ed video and music to be shared across multiple devices. So is this the death knell for digital rights management?
Content specialist
Siim Vips
Modera
If there is the demand for change and there are individuals that can make it happen, then it is possible that it can happen. This school of thought is even more viable with the Web and related technologies; it always has been. The old adage “where there is a will there is a way” seems to ring to true in this environment more than anywhere else. Common sense should tell us that there will be countless frustrated users that feel that they are restricted from moving their content onto different devices, so it is more than likely the work of Jon Lech Johansen, aka DVD Jon, will be celebrated by many.
Artists, publishers and technology providers, together, have perhaps not tuned into the voice of users well enough, and as a result we have a situation where individual/s have exposed the masses to more choices and options serving their demand. doubleTwist rightly enlightens consumers on the use of content and advises that the service is to be used and not abused, so the judgement relies upon the end-user to make the good and right decision.
Education between the aforementioned and content consumers is paramount. Digital rights management (DRM) needs to be re-assessed and royalties allocated fairly to the respective creators, publisher and owners. Is this the end? Perhaps, but one thing is certain; whether it is welcomed or not, DRM has changed, so the understanding and application of it needs to reflect this.
Siim is a content management specialist at Modera.
Internet playboy
Drew Curtis
Fark
What, you mean like how BitTorrent wiped out the DVD industry already?
Drew is the owner of Fark.com.
Open source guru
Tristan Nitot
Mozilla Europe
I hope that the beginning of the end for DRM is behind us, at least for music. Consumers have shown that they do not want technology that prevents them from listening to their music on the device of their choice. The issue is that many songs have been bought over time, and doubleTwist may be the answer for consumers in order to enable them to move their songs from one computer to another, or one playing device to the other. Overall, it’s great news for consumers.
Tristan is the president of Mozilla Europe, a not-for-profit organisation funded by donations.
Web standards expert
Christian Heilmann
Yahoo
It might not mark the end of DRM, but is another example of how any protection can and will be broken. Nine Inch Nails proved that there is another way to do business, by giving out an album for free and offering a massively enhanced version for money. The race of protection vs cracking geniuses is partly what makes media expensive, and makes people choose pirated versions instead. I don’t think you can make a download only playable on one device, it is against human nature as we love to collect and archive things. As hardware is very short-lived these days, we tend to want to archive on other computers, hard-drives and DVDs.
Christian works for Yahoo as a web developer, and he’s a self-proclaimed “web standards nut”.
Digital rights activist
Danny O’Brien
Electronic Frontier Foundation
I think it represents the middle of the end. DRM has been dying for months, after being kept on life support for years by the snake-oil of some technologists and the dreams of rightsholders who thought there might be a way to take easily-copied data and turn it into something that resembled old-fashioned packed goods. The tragedy is that while the entertainment industry is facing reality and switching to unencumbered formats, the laws that they fought for to shore up DRM - the Digital Millennial Copyright Act (DMCA) and European Copyright Directive (EUCD) are still on the books. That means that it’s generally still illegal in the US and Europe to break DRM to exercise your fair-use rights. If we can reform those laws, we might be able to not only look forward to a DRM-free future, we might be able to save the thousands of past tracks trapped in unreadable DRM-crippled formats.
Danny O’Brien is the International Outreach Coordinator for the EFF.
Legal expert
Struan Robertson
Pinsent Masons
I don’t think DRM will go away, at least not for long. There has always been a game of cat and mouse between those seeking to enforce DRM and those like DVD Jon who break it. Others might point to the decision of some content producers to issue music that is DRM-free, but I don’t believe either development marks the beginning of the end for DRM.
If you accept that companies should have rights in their own digital content, they must be allowed to exercise some control over these rights. Most consumers accept that software, music and movie companies should have rights in their work; they just don’t necessarily agree on the details. Companies explain their rights in small print that nobody reads; they enforce them with DRM. So consumers who dislike the terms blame the DRM, not the terms themselves. When the terms are acceptable, DRM can operate unnoticed.
For example, once you’ve made the decision to buy a software package, you may accept that you should not be able to copy it for friends; but you might get upset if you discover after the purchase that you’re limited to running it on one machine. If you buy a song from iTunes, you don’t notice the DRM until you want to play it on your Nokia phone. Same thing with DVDs: you probably don’t notice the DRM until you buy a disc from another region. It’s the policy to restrict the use of the content, not the enforcement tool, that should be the focus of objections.
Content owners will always need ways to protect their work and it’s cheaper to prevent misuse if you can than to sue after the event. DRM has a future. The challenge for the content owner is to find a form of DRM that consumers don’t notice and to set terms of use that consumers are willing to accept. However, unreasonable policies and poor implementations have given DRM a very bad name and it is this negative PR that will encourage some companies to drop DRM in the short term. Just don’t assume that the concept is on its way out for good.
Struan is senior associate at Pinsent Masons, a full service commercial law firm based in London. He’s also editor of OUT-LAW magazine.
Derek Dunlop
Conchango
Do I think that Double Twist signals the end of DRM? Absolutely not (that is the short answer). The music industry has been dragging its heels and is almost all there now. There is some other technology, though, that (although not DRM) is more MRT (Media Reporting & Tracking). It is fair enough to remove rights management – but, being an artist myself, you still want to be paid for it. Music is NOT free and there should be some element of reporting to show what is happening with the music that is being shared. As any artist will tell you, they would rather have their music listened to by 1,000,000 people for free than have only 1,000 paying £10 for it…
The movie industry is a very different kettle of fish, in that an album can be created for under £1,000,000, but a blockbuster movie can cost over $300,000,000 – and there lies the protection to make sure that they can recoup that money and make a profit. No profit means no more blockbuster movies. I could go on…
So, back to doubleTwist. It shares the media by re-encoding the original media file so that it can be shared – this, in effect, is illegal. The way that Kazaa, TuneTribe and now doubleTwist get away with it is that they are providing the tools to do this. It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that they are not breaking any copyright or breaching publishers’ conditions – any change in format from which it was originally delivered is, in fact, a breach of the conditions under which you purchased that item. This was then made less strict by stating an exemption if it was for personal and private use only.
doubleTwist is a good combination of DRM ripping and a media delivery network – but has no impact at all on the DRM debate.
Derek is senior business consultant at Conchango and a digital media strategist for global companies.
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